I’m Tired of Shortcuts

Why does everything have to be so convenient?

I was just typing in a post to a forum, and I wanted to go back and remove the word ‘So’ from a sentence that said ‘So we…’ I wanted the W capitalized, so I backspaced, was hitting shift-W, and the entire window closed. In Netscape, if you hit ctrl-shift-W, it closes the entire browser. No confirmation, no nothing. Boom! Closed!

Who knew this? Why do we need this? This happens to me all the time. I fat-finger the keys on my keyboard and something far from what I expected happens.

Weren’t short-cut keys designed so that people who learned them could perform tasks quicker? How does ctrl-shift-W trump Alt-F4 for closing a window? Why do we need a shortcut key for something that’s already available? Can we make short-cut keys toggle-able, so that when I want them I can use them?

I use short-cuts all the time. I ctrl-+ to make text bigger, and ctrl– to make it smaller. I alt-F4 programs closed. But generally I click around with the mouse. It suits me just fine.

I’m so ready for a new user interface. I’m so ready for a new operating system. Somehow I don’t think Windows Vista is going to change any of this. I’m sure it’ll be jam-packed with shortcut keys so if you hit ctrl-shift-blah-de-blah your checkbook gets balanced. Yay.

Simpler is better. But make it customizeable, so that if I want it complicated, I can complicate it all that I want. Take advantage of all those unemployed software engineers out there (ie open-source). An operating system should be a cafeteria tray. Something that holds the dishes that you choose, and that’s pretty much it.

This reminds me of something else. In the early days they both performed vital and necessary functions, and that’s it. They didn’t use a lot of resources, and what they did use they had to use as economically as possible Then someone added a calculator, and now we expect them to do everything for us.